Excelling Teaching & Learning : S.I.M. & A.R. : Test Results : What is DAP

District Achievement Plan

Purpose

The Scottsdale Unified School District has developed tests which are used for assessing a student's progress in achieving the state standards. These District Assessments (DAP's) additionally provide feedback to the schools on curriculum, instruction and professional development needs, and help assure alignment with state standards. These assessments are criterion referenced. In this case the DAP references the Arizona State Standards.

Scottsdale's DAP tests are created by district teachers. Over the several years of development, questions are refined and rewritten as indicated by statistical item analysis. Items are analyzed to determine item functioning, racial and gender bias and item performance by ability level.

DAP Tests are administered in Reading, Mathematics, Writing and most recently Science. In previous years, DAP's have been administered in the spring, thus assessing end of year proficiency on grade specific standards. For the 2002-2003 school year, some DAP's will be administered in the fall. The fall assessments will be administered in Reading grades 2-12 and in Math in grades 2-8 and will cover the proficiency items from the previous year. The results of the fall DAP's will be used to identify areas of deficiency in mastering the state standards from the previous year. They will give the teachers a useful way of assessing individual and class difficulties and will be used for instructional planning.

Math district assessments in Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II will be administered at the end of the courses in the Spring, as will Science Assessments in all grades. At the High School level, DAP scores are used, either in whole or in part, as final exams.

Using DAP Data

In order to measure student growth from year to year, the DAP data was analyzed to create a common scale. The Scottsdale Unified Schools uses a scale of 200 to 800 where 200 indicates the lowest non-zero score obtained by a first grade student, and 800 indicates the highest score obtained by a high school student taking that test. Using these scaled scores, a student's growth can be tracked over time. Scale scores are available for Reading and Mathematics. School results show the mean scale score, as well as the number of students taking the assessment at that grade level. Science assessments have just finished being piloted and will be field-tested during the 2002-03 school year. Scale scores in Science should be available by Spring 2004.

DAP Results for Scottsdale Unified School District